A Study on the Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Occupational Stress of Secondary School Teachers

Emotional Intelligence (EI) refers to “The capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships.” (Goleman, 1995). Occupational stress is the stress that an employee experiences due to his occupation. It is also called as Work Stress. Stress is the response of the body in a threatening situation. The objective of the study is to find out the relationship between emotional intelligence and occupational stress among secondary school teachers. In the present study, the sample consists of 60 secondary school teachers’ from Hyderabad within the age range of 20 to 60 years. They were divided into 30 teachers with high emotional intelligence and 30 with low emotional intelligence using emotional intelligence scale by Shutte, 1998. Then, the occupational stress index was administered to these two groups. Correlational Analysis and t-ratio was used to test the significant difference between both groups. The result shows that there is a difference of occupational stress levels in the two groups. It was proved that teachers with low emotional intelligence have high levels of occupational stress and the teachers with high emotional intelligence have low levels of occupational stress. The results also show a negative correlation between emotional intelligence and stress.